Impression – Avatar: The Legend of Korra Book 2: Spirit, Episode 07

I was torn when it came to whether or not I should be covering this and the next episode in one or two articles. I ended up deciding to separate it simply because there was enough to talk about. The story of the first avatar is a good one and it should appeal to people who are fans of the original series even if they are not too happy with the way that Legend of Korra has turned out.

Poverty is a sad truth in the world.

Korra lost her memories, so the fire sages brought her to one of their members that could heal her. She stated that Korra needed to be put into the spirit waters in order to cleanse herself of the dark spirit energy. During her time in the spring, Korra was shown a series of memories. These memories were of the first avatar and the beginning of the avatar cycle. People used to live on cities that were built on the backs of lionturtles. The humans feared going out into the wild because that was the domain of the spirits. Wan lived on the back of a lionturtle that had the power to give fire bending to the people. Unfortunately, people were not allowed to keep those powers for long periods of time. What is special about Wan’s city? It is extremely corrupt. One family controlled all of the wealth and this left a large number of people in poverty. Wan “stole” the power of fire bending from the lionturtle and started a rebellion. This led to his banishment into the wilderness where the spirits shunned Wan until he saved a catdeer. After that, Wan lived with the spirits. He learned their ways and developed fire bending alongside a dragon. These actions inspired the other down on their luck members of Wan’s old city and they left for the wilderness with fire bending ready. Wan decides to see the word, but things aren’t as wonderful as he would want them to be.

That was a nice tribute to the Sun Warrior stuff.

Current Opinion of the Show:

Can we change this series into one about Wan instead of Korra? I know that we have only seen half of the story and Legend of Korra is not over yet, but I am already enjoying this more than I enjoyed the first season of Legend of Korra. Wan is a very interesting avatar. Anyone that says he was made to be too nobel doesn’t understand the avatar origin thing. Wan has to be this way because this mentality is what leads to the avatar cycle being established. I am pretty happy with the bending origin stuff. The fact that a lionturtle gave Wan and his people the power of fire bending and one gave Aang the power of spirit bending makes me think that there could be even more interactions with the lionturtles. Could Korra discover a new kind of bending the way that Aang did? I doubt it, but that is mostly because they are running out of things to bend. I would like to know if Aang was really the first one to spirit bend. This stuff has made me think of a few questions that I want answered. How many lionturtles are there? Was Aang the first spirit bender in the avatar cycle? Was spirit bending added to the list of necessary skills to master as an avatar after Aang did what he did? I hope so actually because that would be pretty cool and it would make sense with the heavy focus on spirit bending that this entire series has given us.

Do they remind anyone else of Journey?

Well, the flat squid things are pretty important. Now that we know about the origin of bending in general and the avatar’s connection with the spirits, it is time to learn about the avatar’s need to bring balance to the world. Just being able to master all four elements would not force one into that role. Being someone of mixed race does not instantly make you a bridge between cultures. What am I looking forward to in the next episode? I would like to see how Wan gets his hands on the other elements. We will assume that other lionturtles give him the power, but we should also assume that they don’t hand out the power like it is a sample tray at CostCo. That is something that they have to show us. There are optional things though. The origin of the reincarnation stuff doesn’t have to be explained. We can assume that people are reincarnated and that the avatar is special. Having said that, I can’t imagine this series not explaining the reincarnation cycle. The only other thing I care about is the length of this amnesia stuff. I don’t know how long they plan on keeping this thing up, but the quicker we move on, the better. There is a war going on.